A. van Vogt - The Empire of Isher

Creel said, “You’ve handled him wrong. He’s twenty-three, and you treat him like a child. Remember, at twenty-three you were a married man.”

That was different,” said Fara. “I had a sense of responsibility. Do you know what he did tonight?”

He didn’t quite catch her answer. For a moment he thought she said: “No. In what way did you humiliate him first?”

Fara felt too impatient to verify the improbable words. He rushed on, “He refused in front of the whole village to give me help. He’s a bad one, all bad.”

“Yes,” said Creel in a bitter tone. “He’s all bad. I’m sure you don’t realize how bad. He’s as cold as steel, but without steel’s strength or integrity. He took a long time, but he hates even me now because I stood up for you for so long when I knew you were wrong.”

“What’s that?” said Fara, startled; then gruffly: “Come come, my dear, we’re both upset. Let’s go to bed.”

He slept poorly.

There were days when the conviction that this was a personal fight between himself and the weapon shop lay heavily on Fara. Though it was out of his way, he made a point of walking past the weapon shop on his way to and from work, always pausing to speak to Constable Jor. On the fourth day, the policeman wasn’t there.

Fara waited patiently at first, then angrily. He walked finally to his shop and called Jor’s house. Jor wasn’t home. He was, according to his wife, guarding the weapon store. Fara hesitated. His own shop was piled with work, and he had a guilty sense of having neglected his customers for the first time in his life. It would be simple to call up the mayor and report Jor’s dereliction. And yet he didn’t want to get the man into trouble.

Out in the street, he saw that a large crowd was gathering in front of the weapon shop. Fara hurried. A man he knew greeted him excitedly: “Jor’s been murdered, Fara!”

“Murdered!” Fara stood very still, and at first he was not clearly conscious of the thought that was in his mind: Satisfaction! Now, even the soldiers would have to act. He realized the ghastly tenor of his mind. He said slowly, “Where’s the body?”

“Inside.”

“You mean those… scum—” In spite of himself, he hesitated over the epithet. It was difficult to think of the silver-haired weapon shop man in such terms. His mind hardened. “You mean, those scum killed him, then pulled his body inside?”

“Nobody saw the killing,” said another man, “but he’s gone and hasn’t been seen for three hours. The mayor got the weapon shop on telestat, but they claim they don’t know anything about him. They’ve done away with him, that’s what, and now they’re pretending innocence. Well, they won’t get out of it as easily as that. Mayor’s gone to phone the soldiers at Ferd to bring up some big guns.”

Something of the excitement that was in the crowd surged through Fara, the feeling that big things were brewing. It was the most delicious sensation that had ever tingled along his nerves, and it was all mixed with a strange pride that he had been so right about this, that he at least had never doubted that here was evil. He did not recognize the emotion as the fullflowering joy that comes to a member of a mob. But his voice shook as he said, “Guns? Yes, that will be the answer, and the soldiers will have to come, of course.”

Fara nodded to himself in the immensity of his certainty that the Imperial soldiers would now have no excuse for not acting. He started to say something about what the empress would do if she found out that a man had lost his life because the soldiers had shirked their duty, but the words were drowned in a shout:

“Here comes the mayor! Hey, Mr. Mayor, when are the atomic cannons due?”

There was more of the same general meaning as the mayor’s car landed lightly. Some of the questions must have reached his honor, for he stood up in the open two-seater, and held up his hand for silence. To Fara’s astonishment, the plump-faced man gazed at him with accusing eyes. He looked around him, but he was almost alone; everybody else had crowded forward. Fara shook his head, puzzled by that glare, and then flinched as Mayor Dale pointed a finger at him and said in a voice that trembled, “There’s the man who’s responsible for the trouble that has come upon us. Stand forward, Fara Clark, and show yourself. You’ve cost this town seven hundred credits that we could ill afford to spend.”

Fara couldn’t have moved or spoken to save his life. The mayor went on, with self-pity in his tone, “We’ve all known that it wasn’t wise to interfere with these weapon shops. So long as the Imperial government leaves them alone, what right have we to set up guards or act against them? That’s what I’ve thought from the beginning, but this man…this…this Fara Clark kept after all of us, forcing us to move against our wills, and so now we’ve got a sevenhundred credit bill to meet and—”

He broke off with, “I might as well make it brief. When I called the garrison, the commander laughed and said that Jor would turn up. And I had barely disconnected when there was a money call from Jor. He’s on Mars.” He waited for the shouts of amazement to die down. “It’ll take four weeks for him to come back by ship, and we’ve got to pay for it, and Fara Clark is responsible.”

The shock was over. Fara stood cold, his mind hard. He said finally, scathingly, “So you’re giving up, and trying to blame me all in one breath. I say you are all fools.”

As he turned away, he heard Mayor Dale saying that the situation was not completely lost as he had learned that the weapon shop had been set up in Glay because the village was equidistant from four cities, and that it was the city business the shop was after. This would mean tourists, and accessory trade for the village stores.

Fara heard no more. Head high, he walked back to his shop. There were one or two catcalls from the mob, but he ignored them. The worst of it, as the days passed, was the realization that the people of the weapon shop had no personal interest in him. They were remote, superior, undefeatable. When he thought of it, he felt a vague fear at the way they had transferred Jor to Mars in a period of less than three hours, when all the world knew that the trip by fastest spaceship could never be made in less than 24 days.

Fara did not go to the express station to see Jor arrive home. He had heard that the council had decided to charge Jor with half of the expense of the trip, on the threat of losing his job if he objected. On the second night after Jor’s return, Fara slipped down to the constable’s house, and handed the officer one hundred and seventy-five credits. He returned home with a clearer conscience.

It was on the third day after that the door of his shop banged open and a man came in. Fara frowned as he saw who it was: Castler, a village hanger-on. The man was grinning. “Thought you might be interested, Fara. Somebody came out of the weapon shop today.”

Fara strained deliberately at the connecting bolt of a hard plate of the atomic motor he was fixing. He waited with a gathering annoyance that the man did not volunteer further information. Asking questions would be a form of recognition of the worthless fellow. A developing curiosity made him say finally, grudgingly, “I suppose the constable promptly picked him up?”

He supposed nothing of the kind, but it was an opening.

“It wasn’t a man. It was a girl.”

Fara knitted his brows. He didn’t like the idea of making trouble for women. But the cunning devils! Using a girl, just as they had used an old man as a clerk. It was a trick that deserved to fail; the girl was probably a hussy who needed rough treatment. Fara said harshly, “Well, what’s happened?”